Mobile communication systems continue to grow in popularity and have become an integral part of both personal and business communications. Various mobile devices now incorporate Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) features, such as calendars, email, address books, Internet (“Web”), task lists, calculators, memo and writing programs, media players, games, etc. For example, these multi-function devices usually allow users to send and receive electronic mail (email) messages wirelessly and access the internet via a cellular network, wireless wide area network (WWAN), and/or a wireless local area network (WLAN), for example.
Some mobile devices also incorporate contactless card reading technology, and/or other Near Field Communication protocols, antennae, and/or chips to enable such contactless card reading technology. Near Field Communications (NFC) technologies may be used for short-range communications. NFC may use magnetic field induction to enable communication between electronic devices, including, for example, mobile wireless communications devices, and to enable communications between, for example, devices and passive cards, tags, or the like. NFC communications are typically over short ranges, such as over distances of a few centimeters or less, and may be high frequency in nature. These short-range communications applications may include, for example, payment and ticketing, electronic keys, identification, device set-up service and similar information sharing, by way of non-limiting example.
An NFC connection may deliver, or otherwise enable transfer of, for example, address or other reference data or other information useful for referring NFC readers and/or other devices to, or otherwise identifying, remote and/or other networked computing resources, including for example both processors and memory storage devices. Such reference data may include, for example data associated with phone numbers, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or other Internet address information, personal or business contact information, geographic or other physical location, and the like.
As stated above, NFC technologies may employ physical and/or virtual tags, cards, and the like that may be read from, and/or written to, by mobile and other NFC-enabled devices. In some embodiments, however, the read/write capabilities of NFC tags may be limited. As such, data transferred during NFC interactions or sessions may be limited to relatively small data sets such as the network resource reference data referenced above.
It may also be advantageous, in various embodiments of such systems, for an NFC-enabled mobile device to be able to display data transferred to, or from, NFC tags and/or other devices in manner(s) which are intuitive to, or otherwise readily intelligible to or useful by, user(s) of such devices.